Is a benchmark going to help answer any of these questions?
The main difference I have found using Apple's M-series of chips for 3D, is unified memory. It totally changes the story about what an individual can create. Massive scenes are now possible, viewport interaction is completely seamless, my Mac can render things PC can't even open. None of that shows up on OctaneBench.
Buy the best Mac you can afford and test Octane on it. Apple have a decent returns policy if the results aren't what you were hoping for.
Of course a benchmark answers those questions. "Buy the best Mac"... sure man, we'll just order a bunch of Mac Studio's at 10k each.
Just because you can afford something, doesn't mean it's the best use of resources. Comparing different mac chips and performance would help everyone in ALL budget ranges decide exactly which mac is the "best" for their use? Weird argument my guy. "The best mac you can afford" and "the best for your use scenario" is not always the same.
Big scenes - cool, yes, we know, that's an advantage. Personally never gone over 24gb of Vram for scenes, ever, so having 96gb of unified maybe is good for some, not really a factor for others.
Once you do have a scene that is larger than you can build on a 3090 or 4090's vram... how do you render that, exactly? If it's using 50gb "vram" because it's unoptimised, or because you filled it with giant sims, you can't just send that to RNDR or a PC. You'd have to render it on the mac you created it on, and then... well, render speed suddenly is important, isn't it? Again weird argument to make my friend.
Basically what you're saying is that there's no reason you think Otoy should have a Mac benchmark tool or incorporate mac scores into the database of GPUS ranging from 780s or less up to 4090s. And the onus is on ordinary users to go buy a mac, test, return, get a different one, test, return.
I can't see any reason why a Mac benchmark tool isn't forthcoming, unless there's some kind of background shennannigans going on. Maybe there's some deal with Apple not to show how their chips rate against Nvidia. I just don't get why. Everyone in the world knows nvidia cards will thrash macs in render scores. But WHERE on the spectrum do any of the mac chips lay? What's the harm in people knowing that? What are Otoy or Apple worried about with release of or access to that kind of data?
Because it can't be technical reasons for not releasing a Mac benchmark tool. It's just a wrapper on the scenes, isn't it? If you can render on Mac you should be able to bench on Mac.
